Personal Picks

Patti Callahan Henry: Coming Up for AirThis author recently moved to Birmingham, and she’s already made lots of friends. It wasn’t hard; her bestselling books preceded her. Besides, she’s a really fun and intriguing person. Her newest book, set on the Alabama coast, is about marriage and motherhood and one woman’s desire to become the person she really wants to be. Ellie Calvin has her hands full already when her controlling mother dies and she runs into her ex-boyfriend at the funeral. The old boyfriend is making a documentary on Ellie’s late mother and has questions only Ellie can answer—with the help of a long-forgotten diary. (*****)

Hillary Jordan: When She WokeHillary Jordan’s debut novel, Mudbound (winner of the 2006 Bellwether Prize for fiction), was an international literary hit. That one was set firmly in the rich soil of a Mississippi Delta farm in the mid 1940s. When She Woke, on the other hand, is futuristic and quite chilling. Here’s an America that we won’t recognize completely but might well be able to imagine. The book begins: “When she woke, she was red. Not flushed, not sunburned, but the solid, declarative red of a stop sign.” Hannah Payne wakes up in a bare room wearing only a paper gown. She has been turned into a “chrome.” Chromes are criminals whose skin color has been genetically altered to reflect their crimes. Murderers are red. There are hints of The Scarlet Letter here in this nightmare world where politics and religion come together in a mighty scary way. (*****)

Susan Haltom: One Writer's Garden: Eudora Welty's Home PlaceOh, this is a lovely book with great photos of the famous writer and her family and neighbors. But the real gems are the colorful photographs of the garden Welty tended with her mother. Chestina Welty designed their modest garden and taught her daughter well. Welty, of course, is known for weaving Southern flora into her writing; much of her knowledge came from time spent in her own garden. Near the end of her life Welty still resided in her family home, but the garden had become neglected. Co-author Susan Haltom is a garden designer, and she offered to help preserve the garden and spent a decade doing that. This beautiful book, organized by seasons and decades, contains previously unpublished writings, including literary passages and excerpts from Welty’s private correspondence about her garden. (*****)

What's on my nightstand...

Susan Rebecca White: A Soft Place to Land: A NovelThis is a book about sisterhood and the often-complicated love that go along with it. When their parents die in an airplane accident, 13-year-old Ruthie and 16-year-old Julia are sent away from their Atlanta home to live separately in distant parts of the country—in drastically different cultures. The story spans nearly two decades and follows the sisters from this familiar Southern home to bohemian San Francisco, a Virginia mountain town, the campus of Berkley and the lofts in Brooklyn. Once close, the sisters grow up and apart and their relationship becomes complicated by anger, resentment and jealousy. But then another shocking accident changes their lives once again. White is the author of the critically acclaimed Bound South, in which she writes lovingly and insightfully about Atlanta, where she was born and raised.

Frances Mayes: Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian LifeCelebrated travel writer and bestselling author Frances Mayes (Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany) is back and continuing her decades-long love affair with Tuscany’s people, art, cuisine and lifestyle. This is a deeply personal account of her present-day life in Tuscany, detailing the changes she has experienced since the success of her first two books and her reflections on the unchanging beauty and simple pleasure of Italian life.

Robin Lane Fox: Travelling Heroes: In the Epic Age of Homer (Vintage)The myths of the ancient Greeks have inspired us for thousands of years. But where did these stories come from? How did they spread around the world? Fox draws upon the latest archaeological evidence, his own travels and his vast knowledge of the ancient world to answer these questions. He explores how the Mediterranean seafarers of 8th-century B.C. Greece encountered volcanic mountains, vaporous springs, huge prehistoric bones and more and then weaved them into their legends of gods, monsters and heroes.

David Ebershoff: The 19th Wife: A NovelMy bookgroup is reading this one right now. This book combines historical fiction with a murder mystery, and my bookgroup is reading this one right now. One story line, set in 1875, involves Ann Eliza Young, who has recently separated from her powerful husband, Brigham Young, prophet and leader of the Mormon Church. Ann Eliza begins a crusade to end polygamy in the United States. A rich account of a family’s polygamous history is revealed, including how a young woman became a plural wife. A second story is the tale of murder involving a polygamist family in present-day Utah. Jordan Scott, a young man who was thrown out of his fundamentalist sect years earlier, must reenter the world that cast him aside in order to discover the truth behind his father’s death. Both narrative intertwine to create a larger story of love and faith.

April 25, 2012

Thursday, April 26, 2012 is Poem in Your Pocket Day. Celebrate poetry by putting a poem in your own pocket, carry it with you throughout your day and perhaps take it out every now and then to share.

I’ll send my family to work and school with poems I picked out especially for them. I've turned to my poetic hero Billy Collins for inspiration. The idea comes from The Academy of American Poets. And it’s a cool and simple way to share poetry with those you love … and those you might not even know.

The official Poem in Your Pocket Day started in New York in 2004. Since then, each year the city parks, bookstores, workplaces and other venues there (and elsewhere as the idea has spread!) are pocket-poem friendly.

Here are just a few ways to share some poetry and celebrate this fun day:

post pocket-sized poems in public places;

handwrite some lines of poetry on the back of the business cards you give out;

grab some co-workers and hand out poems to passersby during your lunch hour;

April 10, 2012

The 15th Annual Alabama Writers Symposium is set for April 26-28 in historic Monroeville.

The 2012 Alabama Writers Symposium will explore the theme “Write Out of Place,” looking at all the ways in which Alabama writers are affected by their “placehood,” specifically, the ways in which Alabama as a place informs their literary efforts.

April 03, 2012

Thursday, April 5 is another 5% Day at Whole Foods Market, and this time our Jefferson County Libraries will benefit! On Thursday, 5 percent of that day's net sales will be donated to our local public libries.

April 02, 2012

A timely family story, fiction from a familiar name, local literature and maybe the most useful cookbook ever! Here's what I'm talking about on Fox 6's Good Day Alabama on Tuesday, April 4 and Saturday, April 7.

A Rare Titanic Family: The Caldwells’ Story of Survival (NewSouth Books) by Julie Hedgepeth Williams

This book is as timely as it is fascinating. April 15 marks the 100th anniversary of this tragic event that continues to capture our attention and our imaginations. Williams grew up hearing family stories about how her great uncle Albert Caldwell; his wife, Sylvia, and their young son escaped the Titanic. They were among the very small number of families that came out of that disaster alive and together. But there’s more to this story: The Caldwells had been Presbyterian missionaries in Siam (now Thailand), but they left when Sylvia got sick. They ended up in England, via the Far East, the Middle East and Europe. But fellow missionaries believed the couple made up Sylvia’s illness and that they planned to renege on their contract with the church that had sponsored them. So, it turns out that being involved in the most famous shipwreck in history was only one of this family’s problems! Williams relied on Albert’s firsthand account of the disaster as well as family stories, newspaper articles, journals and church documents to tell her family’s extraordinary story.

A Wedding in Haiti (Algonquin, publication date April 24) by Julia Alvarez

Julia Alvarez’s books are internationally acclaimed. Many, like How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of Butterflies, are taught in high school and college curriculums. In A Wedding in Haiti, we follow Alvarez on her own journey into a new country and culture. It’s a narrative that spans both pre- and post-earthquake Haiti and includes Alvarez’s parents; her husband; and a young Haitian boy named Piti, whom Alvarez first met in 2001. The author, over the years, has come to view Piti as a son; she even promised to be at his wedding one day. As Alvarez explains, “… devastation happens around the world and at home. But those tragedies are too huge to absorb. We understand them best in the small, human-sized portion a story serves up. This is a journey of the heart to a Haiti that often gets missed. In a far-off hut, an hour’s hike from where a dirt road ends, Piti is getting married. I invite you to enter this story and see what happens when we keep a promise.”

This newest edition of PMS, a journal of women’s poetry, memoir and short fiction, opens with an interview by Lauren Slaughter with internationally esteemed poet Mary Jo Bang, and it’s followed immediately with Bang’s beautiful Canto XXVI. From there, the pages cover a variety of subjects (the isolation of a nursing home, the terrifying world of drug addiction, the angry teenage daughter of a racist, a revelation in a Hallmark store). “ … a theme of displacement can be seen in the fractured settings of so many of poems, memoirs, and stories,” writes editor Kerry Madden. “Displacement is in the air these days with families being uprooted and broken, often to the running soundtrack of our age of information overload.” Sit down with this spring issue; slow down with this spring issue. Understand something new.

Award-winning poet David Bottoms, the poet laureate of Georgia, opens this Spring 2012 edition with My Old Man Loves Fried Okra, andhis simple, straightforward, relevant poem paints a picture that is both lovely and heartbreaking and, quite possibly, very familiar. Other poems that stay with the reader include Michelle Penaloza’s Reverie: Nightfishing

“The silver fish sidle inshore, opaque lines, nets

of the mind – words before they leave the tongue.

The torches their lures, the old men fall silent and watch

the clamor of fish climb the branches of their swaying nets.”

And Travis Wayne Denton’s Local Men

“They’re the ones you read about in the papers,

Never good news. For Example: Local Man, Found Face Down

In His Teriyaki at Bill’s Lucky Buddha, Foul Play Suspected.

Look around, gaggles of local men,

Just waiting to be picked off – thrown in the back

Of a rusted-out Buick (said car last seen speeding

Away from the Circle K).”

How to Cook Everything: The Basics (Wiley) by Mark Bittman

“Cooking, at its heart,” says Mark Bittman, “is simple and straightforward.” It’s also satisfying, economical, time well spent, and it results in truly nutritious food. It also leads to family meals. This book, with its 1,000 informative and encouraging photos, starts by showing you how to set up your pantry. Then there’s a visual guide to basic prep like rinsing and chopping and cooking techniques from boiling water (yes, really) to braising. The recipes here progress from easiest to most challenging, so you can build skills with each dish. Recipes include Quick Pickle Spears, Garlicky White Bean Soup, Paella with Chicken and Sausage and Chili from Scratch. How to Cook Everything: The Basics is perfect for the novice cook (think wedding presents and graduation gifts here), but accomplished cooks will learn a thing or two, also.